Gujarat Court Cites Vedas and Manusmriti in Sentencing Three Muslim Men to Life for Cow Slaughter

A sessions court in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, has sentenced three Muslim men — Wasim Kureshi, Mohammad Rafiq Kureshi, and Asfak Bahelim — to rigorous life imprisonment for cow slaughter and the commercial sale of beef, in a ruling that has drawn widespread scrutiny for its conspicuous reliance on Hindu religious texts.

The court convicted the three men under the Gujarat Animal Preservation Amendment Act and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, among other related statutes. Each convict was also ordered to pay a fine of Rs 3 lakh. The judgment was delivered this week and reported widely on October 29, 2026.

According to court documents and reports, the men had purchased old, non-milking cattle at low prices and slaughtered them for commercial gain. Police seized approximately 277 kilograms of beef when they arrested the accused while the men were in the process of arranging sales of the meat.

What set the ruling apart from routine animal-preservation cases was its opening section, which spanned four pages of theological and cultural context. The judge invoked the Vedas and Manusmriti to underscore the religious and cultural significance of the cow in Hindu tradition, describing the animal as 'the mother of the universe' and referencing the belief that 33 crore deities reside within her.

"If such accused persons are not punished as prescribed by law, the mother cows will become extinct with the passage of time," the court stated in its judgment — a line that has since been widely quoted in media reports and has attracted both defence from Hindu nationalist commentators and sharp criticism from legal scholars and civil liberties groups.

Critics have argued that grounding a criminal sentence in scriptural reasoning raises serious constitutional concerns, given that India's Constitution guarantees a secular state and mandates that judicial decisions rest on statutory law rather than religious doctrine. Legal observers note that while cow-slaughter laws are legitimate state legislation, invoking religious texts to justify the severity of punishment moves into contested territory.

Gujarat has some of the strictest cow-protection laws in India. The Gujarat Animal Preservation Amendment Act, last significantly amended in 2017, provides for life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for slaughter, transport, and sale of beef — one of only a handful of states where such a sentence is possible under cattle-protection legislation.

The case adds to a growing body of high-profile cow-slaughter prosecutions in India's western states, where enforcement has intensified over the past decade alongside the rise of vigilante groups known as gau rakshaks. Human rights organisations have documented multiple incidents in which Muslims and Dalits have been targeted in the name of cow protection, sometimes fatally.

The three convicts are expected to appeal the sentence, according to reports. Legal challenges in similar cases have frequently centred on both evidentiary standards and constitutional questions about proportionality of punishment and equal protection under law.

The ruling is likely to reignite debate in India about the intersection of religion, state law, and minority rights, particularly as courts in several BJP-governed states have increasingly drawn on cultural and religious framing in animal-preservation cases. Civil society groups and opposition politicians have called on the higher judiciary to examine whether judgments of this nature are consistent with the secular foundations of the Indian Constitution.